The Way the World Ends
by larkgrace
Summary: "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper." -T.S. Eliot. /When it comes to the apocalypse, truer words have never been spoken. Carter, Sadie, Zia, Walt, and Jaz are left to face the carnage as the world they love comes to a groaning, violent halt.
1. Five

**Howdy. This will be the first of five one-shots that (hopefully) get posted in the next five days, leading up to the end of the world (which I don't actually think will happen).**

**I actually had this idea back in January. I toyed with the idea of writing them early, then forgot all about it until a week ago. Yay procrastination!**

**Anyway, I don't own the Kane Chronicles. So enjoy. And all that. Or not.**

O-o-O

**-air-**

"What's happening?" Jaz shouted as the wind picked up.

"I don't know!" Walt yelled back. He taped the last section of cardboard up over the warehouse window. "Let's just get this done. Don't want a glass shard sticking in anyone's head."

Jaz nodded. Taping soggy particleboard over the grimy windows of this abandoned warehouse wasn't at the top of her To Do List, but the wind had gotten so bad that she and Walt had had to stagger out of the street and lock themselves in.

Not fun, and certainly not productive. She'd much rather be out and working, tracking down that ghost she had seen a few blocks back, but in this weather it wasn't going to happen.

Walt sank onto a dusty stool in a corner with a sigh. "This sucks," he said.

The windowpanes shuddered loudly in agreement.

Jaz eyed the duct-taped cardboard. "Are you sure that will hold?"

He shrugged. "I can't think of a better idea. It should, though."

He'd jinxed it.

There was a loud _thud _from outside, and the window imploded.

Jaz screamed as the wind blew in, picking up debris and throwing it around the warehouse. Walt threw himself on the floor, narrowly avoiding being hit on the head by a beam of wood that shattered against the wall.

She didn't have the second necessary to consider diving out of the way as the splintered wood flew back across the room and buried itself in her torso.

It took her several seconds for her mind to break through the numbing confusion and form the first thoughts of _something's wrong _as she idly pulled a jagged spike out of the place—that she knew from her anatomy classes—shielded her heart.

It took exactly five seconds—she'd started counting them, _one Mississippi, two Mississippi—_for Walt to make his way across the room and tackle her to the ground. He started pleading with her. "No, no, Jaz, stay awake, please stay awake, you're going to be okay, _please _be okay…"

She ignored him and stared at the ceiling. Bits of paper and glass were spinning and swirling in a glinting vortex, trapped by the corrugated metal roofing. It was sort of beautiful, in a wild way.

She closed her eyes, and in the next second was gone.

O-o-O

**Feel free to take guesses at who I'm going to kill off next. You may or may not be surprised at my choice of victims.**


	2. Four

**This chapter was sort of inspired by **_**Syren, **_**the fifth book in the Septimus Heap series, which everyone needs to read.**

**It was also quite fun to write.**

O-o-O

**-water-**

"Carter!"

"Sadie? Sadie, where are you?"

Carter's hopes weren't high that he would get a response. Sound carried strangely down here—wherever here was—besides, even if he heard Sadie, she probably didn't know where she was either. He'd already tried every spell he could think of to find her, but something was messing with his magic; something, he knew, that inhabited this ancient building.

Something that he was pretty sure wasn't friendly.

He kept running, turning blind corners and doubling back at dead ends. The passageways were convoluted and seemed to be _changing, _guiding him to a destination of its choosing.

Carter didn't know what _it_ was, but still.

He tripped over the malevolent being's destination—a circular chamber, with a floor sunk maybe six inches into the rock. There seemed to be five doors set into the rock, and after a moment three of the doors spit out Sadie, Walt, and Zia, all of whom tumbled to the floor with a yelp.

"Fantastic," Sadie grumbled, rubbing her bruised elbow.

The walls rumbled with gleeful laughter.

Then, go figure, the doors started to slam shut one at a time.

Zia was the quickest to recover. "Run!" she yelled, and yanked Sadie to her feet. She grabbed Carter by the collar and dragged them to the last door still open, Walt dashing behind them, and Zia threw Carter and Sadie through the door and flung herself into the hallway—

And the door slammed shut with Walt trapped inside.

"_No!" _Sadie screamed, pounding on the solid rock slab with bruised and bloody fists.

Zia grabbed Sadie's shirt and dragged her down the corridor, shouting, "Leave him and get a move on!"

"You soulless _bitch!" _Sadie yelled. "How can you just _leave _him? He's probably dying right now—"

Zia spun her around. "We're leaving him," she said, sounding surprisingly cool, "because if this place is what I think it is, we need to leave this instant or we'll all run happily to our own deaths. Clear?"

Sadie seemed unable to respond, which Zia took as an invitation to keep dragging her.

"What's going on?" Carter demanded as they ascended a crumbling flight of steps.

"There's a Siren here," Zia said.

"Huh?"

"Siren. Possessive spirit. Sings to lure sailors to their watery graves and all that." They turned sideways to squeeze through a passage. "It probably lives here, but it can't take a physical form unless—"

Walt appeared around a corner and grinned at them, his electric blue eyes sparkling.

"—that happens," Zia finished.

"Come here, little girl," Walt said, cocking a finger at Sadie. "Come give me a kiss."

Sadie took a step forward, but Zia clamped down on her shoulder. "It's not him," she hissed. "Cover your ears."

"You don't want to do that," Walt said, and Carter, who had almost clamped his palms over his ears, stopped. "You want to stay right here. You want to do whatever I tell you." Walt smiled reassuringly.

Doing whatever he wanted didn't sound like such a bad idea, Carter decided. He liked Walt.

Zia slapped him. "Snap out of it," she said.

Walt glared at her. "You need to calm down," he told her.

"I need to calm down, my ass," she snapped. "Go away."

Walt started singing.

It was the most wonderful sound Carter had ever heard. Wordless, tuneless, lovely, enticing—he felt the sudden urge to walk forward, to join Walt, to do whatever he wanted—

Zia screamed.

Carter turned around. She was standing with her hands clamped over her hears, screaming at the top of her lungs, staring straight at him. The sound bounced off the walls, reverberated in his skull—

And a little niggling thought formed, something about Walt, about singing…

_Walt couldn't sing._

_There's a Siren here, _Zia had said.

Two and two crashed together in his brain and he ran, dragging Sadie by the arm behind him.

He heard Walt—the Siren, he corrected himself—scream in frustration, boots slamming against the floor in chase, and Zia reached one hand behind her and yelled _"Ha-di!"_

The corridor exploded. It must have been below the water level, because as the walls imploded the sea came rushing in, washing over everything, and he and Zia barely pulled Sadie up another staircase before they were washed away.

Carter glanced behind him. There was no sign of Walt.

He ran.

O-o-O

**Ah, I do love combining mythos.**


	3. Three

**First order of business: blazikenXlucario, I couldn't reply to your review, but it's cool. Dream is a friend. We insult each other on a daily basis. Although the thought is still appreciated!**

**So I finally realized that I've had a sort of pattern going with the chapters. Like, Jaz is a healer, and she was killed by an injury she couldn't fix; Walt was determined to die as himself in TSS, and he died as a Siren…**

**Subconscious me, I'm impressed with you. Good job.**

**I also think I might have accidentally done some symbolism with this one; I'll explain at the bottom.**

**Enjoy.**

O-o-O

**-fire-**

Carter's knees screamed in protest as he rocketed through the forest; the ground was dry and tough and he swore he could feel himself developing shin splints with every step, but he didn't stop. Beside him, Sadie screamed profanities—at her feet, at the sky, at him—but it was an effective method for keeping her panic at bay, so he wasn't going to stop her.

His own panic wasn't so easy to deal with. It was next to impossible to run with the I'm-going-to-puke-up-my-heart feeling ready to overtake him, never mind the smoke that not only fried his lungs, but obscured his vision—and he knew, he just knew, every time he shot past a tree, that he was going to see some huge, rearing monster and that would be the very unpleasant end of Carter Kane.

But there was no monster and no vicious, bloody demise. There was just smoke and fire and somewhere, far off in the trees, a bellowing roar that shook the ground. It didn't make running any easier.

"Zia," he coughed, and Sadie paused in her stream of curses to remind him that "She told us to _run, _you dillop! _Faster, for fuck's sake, you worthless piece of—"_

Her foul-mouthed commentary continued, giving Carter a play-by-play update on Sadie's visual surroundings: "Get out of my way, you stupid fucking bush—_shit, _ow, _thorns—"_ He did his best to ignore her.

There was another roar, one which actually _did _shake the ground and sent both him and Sadie stumbling to a halt, face-first in the dirt.

Choking and coughing up rotting leaves, Carter finally managed to raise his head, and found himself staring at a solid mass of wood—gigantic, ancient trees, at the heart of the forest. They were packed so close that, he realized with a sickening jolt, he and Sadie would never be able to run through them. They'd be forced to walk as they picked their way through—which was exactly the sort of thing Zia had told them not to do; _Don't you dare slow down, run until you're out of the trees—no, don't wait for me, I'll find you—go!_

Her final order had been accompanied by a hearty shove, and then Zia had turned her back on both of them and sprinted away—straight toward the sounds of something huge crashing through the trees.

Carter hadn't looked back, but he'd felt the heat as Zia's battle with the whatever-it-was—she'd refused to tell him—set the nearest trees burning.

That had been ages ago. Now, with despair lapping eagerly at his heels, he looked at the solid wall of forest and his mind cast itself back, searching their route for a place to turn off, escape the trees, and he found himself conjuring up the memories of the roars and was suddenly, absolutely _convinced _that through the noise he had heard a human scream—

And then as Sadie pulled him to his feet and commanded him to get his "lazy arse moving, you horrible _useless lump of an organism" _he _did _hear a scream—a very human scream.

Sadie's insults halted as someone staggered out of the trees. Zia appeared from the shadows, clutching at her stomach with one hand and steadying herself against a tree with the other. She looked up, her amber eyes sparkling despite the darkness around them, and for one wonderful, horrible moment, Carter could see everything with absolute clarity.

Later, he guessed that adrenaline had sped up his thought process—putting him in do-or-die mode—but just then, he was convinced that the world had taken pity on him and stopped time for a moment. Or maybe the world was being especially cruel, letting him see everything.

Zia's clothes were in tatters—in fact, they were so clawed and torn that it was being generous to call the fluttering scraps of fabric _clothes—_but that was nothing next to the skin underneath. She was shredded, soaked in sticky red liquid that ran down her body and pooled on the forest floor and reeked of rust and copper and made his stomach lurch as the stink of bloo—

No.

Zia's left hand, the one pressed to her stomach, was missing several fingers. She was shaking, nearly doubled over as she held her hand close, like she was trying to hold herself together—

And then, to his horror, Carter realized that she _was _holding herself together, that she was torn open and bleeding and collapsing—

And as her knees hit the ground she yelled "Go!"—

The next moment was astonishingly quiet. There was no earthshaking explosion, no final scream of agony. The loudest sound was Sadie's shout as she threw up a shield against the column of fire that rolled out of the trees with a soft _whoom._

The flames lapped at their little bubble's edges and rolled on.

The trees had been reduced to piles of ash, piles that drifted through the air and obscured his vision of the monstrous thing lumbering across the wasteland.

Sadie dragged him to his feet, and she dragged him on, his ears still ringing from the horrible ghastly silence.

O-o-O

**These are getting more and more gruesome and it's fun.**

**Anyway, accidental symbolism: was I the only one who noticed that Zia never really talked to anyone in the series except Carter? Like, she made polite conversation with Sadie a few times, but she never sat down and actually talked about herself with anyone else. On a slightly related topic, Riordan dropped some two-ton hints that Zia's mental health wasn't exactly its best. (Ask I'mDifferent-GetOverIt for details; she was the one who pointed it out to me because Tori is a genius.) In fact you could even make a case for her being certifiably insane.**

**So I started developing this theory-type thing that Zia doesn't really talk about herself because she's afraid of herself, or her past, or something deep and metaphorically resonant like that, and if she actually had to open up it would kill her.**

**Ha. Ha. Geddit. 'Cause she—**

**Yeah.**

**That's probably the painkillers talking. (I dislocated some ribs the other day.)**

**The painkillers should probably stop talking. Bye.**


	4. Two

**Christ almighty, I can't see out my window. Too much snow. If this doesn't get posted on time it's because I didn't have Internet access, which I currently don't. Hopefully that will change soon.**

**Anyway—yay, I wasn't the only one who noticed the irony/symbolism! I'm not crazy! I knew I wasn't crazy (I say to my cat).**

**Come on, I can't be the only one who talks to my cat. Cats are actually really intelligent; they understand a couple of hundred words of the human languages they grew up around. Although obviously mine doesn't understand "get down". Sigh.**

**Anyway. Chapter. Enjoy.**

O-o-O

**-earth-**

Sadie simply could not run anymore. Her joints felt as though they were turning to molten lava, her lungs seemed to have shrunk to a fraction of the size they needed to be, her feet were ready for a full-scale revolt and her head felt like it was going to fall off.

"We should…stop," she gasped, her pants echoing through the tunnels. "Get some…sleep."

Carter knitted his fingers and put his hands on his head while he caught his breath. "You sleep," he finally said. "I'll keep watch."

She nodded. She was hardly going to pass up a chance for some rest. They'd lost their bedrolls an indeterminate measure of time ago, so there was nothing to do but sack out on the stone floor of the cavern and hope the spiders stayed away.

Carter leaned against the wall, turned his face to the ceiling and closed his eyes. Under any other circumstances Sadie would've taken this as an opportunity to tease him about his lousy _watching _skills, but he'd hear anything that was coming and anyway she was hardly in the mood.

She'd discovered a while ago that there was no comfortable position with which to sleep on a floor, so she curled up on her side with her back to Carter. She'd let him have his moment to wallow. He needed it.

She closed her eyes and tried not to think about the last time they'd been in this tunnel, all five of them, with Zia taking first watch because she ran on batteries and Carter and Walt snoring away and Jaz laughing with Sadie about the boys' snuffles and Zia trying not to look amused, and now…

Now she had to stop herself from vomiting.

She could hear Carter sniffing, but she was too exhausted to crash his pity party. She slept.

When she woke up, it was to Carter shouting incoherently over a mysterious rumbling sound, shoving her against the opposite wall. She looked up and screamed. The tunnel was collapsing; chunks of stone were falling all around her and Carter was ordering her to move and she scrambled back until she was pressed against the opposite wall—

Just as Carter's side of the tunnel caved in and fell on him.

Her throat was raw from screaming before she heard him pleading for help.

His shoulders and head were free, although it was hard to tell that he was alive, since he was trapped face-down. She crawled to him and wrapped her hand around his fingers, caked with dust and dirt and dried blood. He groaned and raised his head.

His lips were bloody.

"No," she said. "No. Listen to me. You're okay, you're fine, you're going to be fine."

"Terrible liar," he croaked back.

He squeezed her hand and coughed.

"Come on," she pleaded, "you don't want to leave your baby sister all alone."

He smiled weakly. "You c'n…take care'f yourself."

"No," she said, "no I _can't. _I _won't."_

"You will," he said, and closed his eyes.

She slid on the floor and slid her shoulder under his head, and he draped an arm over her torso, and she laid there with him as his breath rattled and gargled until finally it stopped.

She sat up. Dusted herself off.

She drifted down the tunnel in a daze, with nothing to hold her down.

O-o-O

**Woohoo, Internet!**

**Also, woohoo **_**no school tomorrow due to ridiculous amounts of snow!**_

**And last but not least, yay not-entirely-unintentional symbolism: the earth is, you know, kind of the ultimate history textbook—it basically recorded everything, you know? So I figured that the "earth" chapter would be the best one in which to briefly address the aftereffects of the other deaths. Plus, you know, Carter being put under tremendous amounts of pressure throughout the series, and then…**

**Teehee. I do enjoy being evil.**

**I'm going to watch more Crash Course videos and whine about my back and the yucky weather, so ta-ta for now!**


	5. One

**And now, the final installment. On the day the world ends. (I think the end is near. The ground is covered in a strange white substance and everything is cold.)**

**Anyway, read on.**

O-o-O

**-storm-**

It seemed fitting that Sadie should end up back home.

Except she couldn't possibly be home, could she? Because Brooklyn House was empty, abandoned, its occupants long dead or fled or simply vanished. This creaking, waterlogged building couldn't be her home. It just couldn't.

She wandered around the Great Room, her boots squelching in the soaked carpets. The windows were shattered, the doors hanging crooked on their hinges. Philip's pool was covered in a thin film of scum.

Sadie trailed her fingers along the Thoth statue's base, which Cleo had scrubbed lovingly every day. It was cracked and spotted with dried blood.

It was funny, she thought as she ascended the creaking stairs, how quickly a place could fall apart once everyone who had tended it was gone.

She passed through the second floor of bedrooms in a daze. Zia's room was still neat. Not even the forces of nature would dare touch her belongings.

There was a faint light coming from inside Walt's room when she passed it. His laptop, wheezing on its last vestiges of battery power—when she stroked the mousepad, his background popped up, with a much happier version of herself seated on his lap, smiling at the fireworks that had decorated the sky last July.

The screen went black as the laptop died.

She passed Jaz's room. Her guitar was propped up in the corner, waiting for its owner to return and play it lovingly.

The strings were snapped.

Carter's room was its usual mess.

She supposed he must have been going through a stage of semi-rebellion; after all, if _she'd _been forced to live out of a suitcase for eight years, she would've transformed her room into a pigsty as well. Piles of clothes were scattered in front of his closet, papers and books littered every flat surface, and his bed was unmade—come to think of it, he probably hadn't made a bed in his life. Lucky boy.

Lucky, dead boy.

She sifted through the pile on his nightstand. A picture of himself and Walt dressed up last Halloween as a couple of characters from some movie that Sadie had never seen but Sadie had taken great pleasure in teasing them both about; what self-respecting teenage boy would watch a movie called _The Princess Bride? _

She dug a little more and found a small silver bracelet with a single tag; there was a red caduceus on the front and an inscription on the back. Carter had been allergic to penicillin. There was a battered copy of _The Hobbit; _when she flipped open the front cover, she saw careful pencil markings, translations of the runes on the inside: _The Hobbit or There and Back Again. _

She carefully replaced the book and made her way to the roof.

The wind whipped her hair into her face, but she shoved it away and staggered to the railing, the rain slicing through her and soaking her straight to the bone. She felt the building groan in protest as the elements battled it.

She scratched away a bit of rust from the rail and gazed over the city. The streetlights simply couldn't compare to the lightning crackling above, playing through the swirling clouds, illuminating the urban wasteland.

Brooklyn House swayed under her feet as the wind pushed and shoved at it. The movement made her feel sick, so she turned instead and looked over the rooftop. Freak's nest was abandoned, an empty crate still set out in front of it.

The lightning flashed again, and the building rumbled, swayed, cracked, collapsed.

A dozen spells flashed through her mind, a dozen ways to live.

But she was so, _so _tired.

She closed her eyes and sighed with relief as the rooftop gave way, and she fell.

O-o-O

**And with that, I bid you a fond farewell. This miniseries has come to an end. (Huh. I actually finished something. First time for everything.)**


End file.
